“Gerry was holding, we know, over $100 million, almost $200 million dollars in funds,” O’Brien said. “That makes people do some pretty crazy things. And I think Gerry was aware of that, and I think he was kind of worried that something might happen.”

“I think here we do have one leg up in a dead man’s switch,” O’Brien said. “A dead man’s switch would be something that Gerry would have had to set up before he passed away.”

A dead man’s switch is a system designed to be activated in the event that its human operator is killed or becomes incapacitated. In this case, it’s a computer program. If the user doesn’t talk to the program for a specified amount of time, ranging from days to years, the switch activates and sends encryption codes to someone the user designates, enabling that person to log into locked accounts.

So far, though, the court-appointed accounting firm that’s trying to recover the funds has struck out.

O’Brien says it could all have been avoided if bitcoin owners controlled their own investments, rather than entrusting them to an exchange.